People LIke Her(12)

Not much to go on, until now.

According to Google, there are eight pubs called the Lord Nelson in London. Three are too far west. One is too far south. One is way, way out, practically in Middlesex.

That left three. The first looked promising, when I typed the postcode into Street View. The road looked like the kind of place I could imagine someone like Emmy living. It was just around the corner from the Tube. There was a petrol station in walking distance and a Tesco Metro. It was the house itself that was all wrong. There was no way Emmy Jackson lived behind those greying net curtains, in a house with a front door painted with red gloss paint. Neither of the places on either side of it were any good either. One had a load of posters in the window for an animal welfare charity; the other had a load of weeds growing out of the cracked concrete of the front garden and a car on bricks on the driveway.

The second Lord Nelson was next door to a high-rise.

The third Lord Nelson had metal shutters up on all the windows and appeared to have been out of business for some time.

I was genuinely stumped. I actually retrieved the magazine from the recycling pile to look at it again and check I hadn’t made some kind of mistake, that I had not missed some crucial detail. There it was: definitely a pub, definitely directly opposite their house, and those were definitely the letters visible through their front window. It did not make any sense. Unless everything Mamabare had ever said and written about her neighborhood was an elaborate act of misdirection? Unless they actually lived in a completely different part of London to the one they claimed?

But none of the other five Lord Nelsons in London fitted the bill either. One was opposite a park. One faced onto a dual carriageway. None of the frontages of any of the pubs matched with what was visible through the photographed window of Emmy and her husband’s house.

I turned off the computer in frustration and went through to the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. It was almost ten o’clock. What had started as an evening of great excitement had gradually turned flat, then curdled. I went through to the living room and turned on the news. It was all bad. After about five minutes I turned it off and went to bed.

I had switched the bedside light off and checked my alarm and was thinking about something else entirely, about a couple of things I needed to do in the morning, when it hit me.

Lord Napier.

There was a pub opposite the railway station in the town where I grew up called the Lord Napier.

I switched the light back on. I went through to the computer. As it warmed up and turned on, I drummed my fingers impatiently on the edge of the keyboard.

There are three pubs called the Lord Napier in London. There is only one in east London. I looked it up on Google Maps.

It is five minutes from a Tube station. It is around the corner from a petrol station. It is a quick stroll from a Tesco Metro. It is nearish to the canal.

I checked how long it would take to get from the pub (or opposite it) to Westfield. The answer: exactly ten minutes, on the Central line.

I clicked on Street View. I entered the postcode. I reached across for the paper. I looked from screen to photograph and from photograph to screen again. We had a match. I scrolled the screen around until I was looking at the house opposite. It had new curtains, a freshly painted dark grey front door, shutters.

Hello, Emmy.

Dan

Answer your phone. Answer your phone. Answer your fucking phone.

It’s definitely ringing. Ringing and ringing and then going to voicemail. Emmy must be above ground by now. Why is it still going to voicemail?

Jesus Christ.

I suspect every parent has experienced this at some point. That feeling, that gut-twisting, pore-prickling feeling, your throat tightening and your pulse pounding in your temples and your breath catching in your throat and your eyes frantically scanning the crowd at waist height, at child height—and the child who was holding your hand literally two seconds ago nowhere to be seen. And even as half of your brain is telling yourself not to be so silly, that she’s just slipped off to have another look at something in the window of the toy shop you passed a few minutes ago, has just seen something that caught her eye (a poster, a snack stand, something shiny) and wandered over to investigate, the other half of your brain has already leapt to the worst possible conclusions.

We are in Westfield, the mall, the one near the former Olympic Park. Coco and I have already been to two shoe shops and are now in a third. Having finally found a pair of proper, sensible shoes that fit and which she does not entirely hate, I let go of her hand just for a second to pay and to take charge of the bag, and when I turn back to ask if she fancies an ice cream she’s gone.

I don’t panic immediately. She’s probably just behind one of the displays. Perhaps she’s gone back over to look at those glittery trainers with the lights in the heel, the ones she was so taken with earlier.

It’s not a large shop. This being a quiet Thursday afternoon, there aren’t a lot of other people in here. It doesn’t take more than a minute or two to establish that Coco is no longer on the premises. In those few brief minutes I have gone from apologetic to anxious to outright panic mode. There are at least two people in the shop, people who work there, who do not appear to be serving anybody. What I cannot understand is why they are just standing around.

“A little girl. The one who was with me.” I hold my hand out to indicate Coco’s height. “You didn’t see where she went?”